EFFIS<\/a> is the European Forest Fire Information System, with experts working to develop and implement methods to evaluate forest fire danger, map burnt areas and give recommendations for improved forest fire prevention in the European and Mediterranean regions. Since 2015, EFFIS has been part of the EU Copernicus Program.<\/p>\n The same forecast shows that Scandinavia will have quite a bit of rain.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is bad news for those planning to spend the summer in Norway, but it means the risk for forest fires is much smaller here,\u201d says Kaiser\u2019s colleague, senior scientist Dr Nikolaos Evangeliou.<\/p>\n As the global temperature rises, it also affects the earth’s water cycle. A warmer climate causes more water to evaporate. A warmer atmosphere is also able to hold more water, which means that we get more rainfall and stormwater. Such changes cause wet areas to become wetter, and dry areas to become drier.<\/p>\n More drought makes forests die \u2013 and burn more easily. The low humidity also leads to increased fire risk in areas with a lot of litter, what the scientists refer to as \u201cbiomass\/fuel availability\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIn several countries in Europe, there are large boreal forests where no biomass removal or maintenance have ever been done. That creates a very dense tree population. If you don\u2019t remove deadwood and litter, and add drought into the equation, such regions can become more vulnerable to fires over time,\u201d Evangeliou explains.<\/p>\n To prevent forest fires, removal of the biomass is key. In some areas, people do so-called prescribed burning. They set the forest on fire in a controlled manner, in order to reduce the amount of fuel on the ground. If a fire should start, it doesn\u2019t spread so quickly, it doesn\u2019t get so intense, and it\u2019s easier to tackle.<\/p>\n Another means of preventing or delaying the spread of forest fires is so-called firebreaks. These are wide stretches of cleared or plowed land, preventing the fire from jumping from one place to another. This practice is fairly common in both Greece and Germany, where the two scientists originally hail from.<\/p>\n \u201cMy family\u2019s country house in Greece has burned down twice in wildfires, in 1992 and 1996. Since 1996, the authorities have been cleaning the litter every single year, and we have not had any problems since. That shows that it is possible to reduce the risk of forest fire with relatively simple means, as long as money is set aside for it,\u201d says Evangeliou.<\/p>\n Not all regions burn alike. Several factors must be taken into consideration when talking about wildfire risks. Certain types of trees, for instance, burn better than others.<\/p>\n Pine trees burn well, and they\u2019re abundant in areas known for big forest fires \u2013 like Greece and Southern France between Bordeaux and the Atlantic. Portugal has large plantations of eucalyptus, to provide raw material for paper and paper pulp industry. This species also burns easily, according to Dr Johannes Kaiser.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth pine and eucalyptus contain a lot of oil, and the eucalyptus leaves and bark are also very flammable. When burning strips of eucalyptus bark tear off the trunks, they can be carried by the wind and spread the flames even further. \u00a0In addition, eucalyptus also use a lot of water, so they dry out the ground,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n When scientist assess forest fire risks, many factors come into play. Meteorology is one thing \u2013 how much available fuel there is, another. Then comes vulnerability.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen talking about how much damage a fire does, we\u2019re really talking about what assets there are, and if it matters if it burns or not. Are people threatened? Will anything of economic value be destroyed? When wildfires reach populated areas, both people and property are endangered,\u201d says Kaiser.<\/p>\n Different areas can vary a lot regarding how vulnerable they are. Scientists also differ between ecological vulnerability and economic vulnerability.<\/p>\n In the EFFIS fire risk viewer<\/a>, Evangeliou uses the Nordic countries as an example. When choosing to show \u2018economic vulnerability\u2019, the Nordics are at the low end of the scale.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tool takes into consideration vegetation restoration cost for forest and agricultural areas, and here in the north there are very large areas with little agricultural activity compared to the rest of Europe,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n On the other hand, when he chooses to look at \u2018ecological vulnerability\u2019, the map shows Norway, Sweden and Finland as very vulnerable.<\/p>\n This is due to the huge forests, and the fact that if you burn a Norwegian fir-covered landscape, it takes several hundred years until it recovers. In contrast, if mediterranean shrubland burns, it\u2019s back to normal only a few years later.<\/p>\n The relation between climate change and more frequent forest fires is a closed feedback loop. Very simply put, you start with the extreme temperatures we have now, which contribute to dried-out forests, leading to a larger number of fires. These fires release particles and pollutants into the atmosphere, where they are transported, some of it towards the Arctic. The particles deposit on snow and ice, darkening the surface and reducing the albedo \u2013 the ability to reflect heat. Thus, the ice sheets melt faster, which again contributes to climate change, which leads to even warmer temperatures \u2013 and so on.<\/p>\n In reality, it is much more complicated. Smoke from fires can for instance also contribute to cooling the atmosphere. Also, increased melting of large ice sheets lower salinity in parts of the ocean. This has the potential of affecting ocean currents, which again may change the global distribution of heat and weather patterns. Less ice can also expose more permafrost, which may lead to higher emissions of methane, which means more global warming and more fires.<\/p>\n An added worry is the extreme wildfires, who are large enough and hot enough to upset the ecological system. When the natural cycle is disturbed, you\u2019re running a risk of it contributing to change in the ecosystem and the land cover.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s natural for boreal forests like we have here in Scandinavia, Russia and Canada to burn. In their natural state they\u2019ve got a repeat period of a few hundred years \u2013 let\u2019s say that a given piece of forest burns down every 300 years. If the wildfires get more frequent, maybe every 30 years instead, the forest doesn\u2019t have time to grow back and recover completely to its original state. The fires accelerate the change of the land cover as the forests burn down, which means less carbon uptake, thus more climate change,\u201d says Kaiser.<\/p>\n Time will show how the European forest fire season of 2024 turns out. What is certain is that human, ecologic and economic costs from wildfires only can be reduced if adequate emergency prevention, response and recovery measures are implemented in a sustainable and regionally adapted manner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last year\u2019s summer was the warmest registered so far, with record temperatures, flooding and wildfires in abundance. With climate change leading to warmer temperatures and drier conditions, the fire season is starting earlier and ending later. Southeastern Europe at risk, rain in Norway \u201cAccording to the seasonal forecast from EFFIS, the Balkans, Greece, and southern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsarchive"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilu.gnist.dev\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilu.gnist.dev\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilu.gnist.dev\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilu.gnist.dev\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilu.gnist.dev\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54248"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nilu.gnist.dev\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54300,"href":"https:\/\/nilu.gnist.dev\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54248\/revisions\/54300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilu.gnist.dev\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilu.gnist.dev\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilu.gnist.dev\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilu.gnist.dev\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nilu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/effis-longtermforecast-03072024-web.png\")
<\/a>Drought and dead forests<\/h2>\n
Prevention measures<\/h2>\n
Wildfire risk factors<\/h2>\n
Does it matter if it burns?<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nilu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/jrc-effis-fireriskviewer-web.png\")
<\/a>Climate change and wildfire: A closed loop<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nilu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/forestfire-feedbackloop.png\")
<\/a>